There Are Now Way Too Many Horses and Bayonets

The unequivocal winner of last night’s presidential debate: Barack Obama. The unequivocal winner of last night’s presidential debate not counting Barack Obama: horses and bayonets, the all-too-easily illustrated little meme that’s taking the Internet by storm this morning.

Backing up for a minute, like a bayonet-wielding soldier riding a horse might have difficulty doing, let’s review the line’s origins. Obama told Romney in what turned out to be the zingiest zinger (non-Candy-Crowley subdivision) of the three debates: “You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets. We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. The question is not a game of Battleship, where we’re counting ships.”

A lady from Twitter e-mailed VF.com directly after the debate revealed that the line engendered the most tweets-per-minute—105,767!—of any other bit of the debate. (Thank you, lady from Twitter!) Mitt Romney character actor John Kerry was responsible for one of the 105,767 tweets: “I think POTUS just sank Romney’s battleship,” he wrote. Boom! Which is the sound of a horse falling to the ground after being killed by a bayonet! (It is also the sound of a bomb.)